Biofuels

Methanol Institute onboard with Open Fuel Standard Act

With gas summer prices again threatening up to $4 a gallon across the U.S., everyone is looking at alternative fuels. Research into methanol, ethanol, and biodiesel is on the rise.

The Methanol Institute today, for example, announced that it's backing of the Open Fuel Standard Act of 2011 (H.R. 1687) in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Methanol is just one of the several alternative fuels that are being researched as affordable alternatives to fossil fuel.

"The Open Fuel Standard Act is all about choice," Methanol Institute Executive Director Gregory Dolan said in a statement. &… Read more

Amyris cranks up biochemical production in Brazil

Amyris announced today a contract manufacturing deal to make specialty chemicals from sugar cane in Brazil, marking the first time the chemical and biofuels company will produce at industrial scale.

The Emeryville, Calif.-based company has contracted with Biomin do BrasilNiutrciao to use its facilities to manufacture a chemical called farnesene, which is used for cosmetic products and lubricants. Production is slated to begin next month.

Amyris will supply sugar cane syrup and fermentation equipment while Biomin will operate the plant, an arrangement that allows Amyris to begin production at commercial scale quicker than building its own facilities, said Jeri Hilleman, the company's chief financial officer.

Through a joint venture, Amyris is in the process of building its own facility in Brazil, which will take 18 months (and is scheduled for completion next year), while the deal with Biomin took about six months and relatively little capital, Hilleman said. Amyris has other contract manufacturing arrangements in Europe and the U.S. … Read more

Raytheon signs on for all-fuel engines

Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems has signed a deal with Cyclone Power Technologies to partner on developing a version of the all-fuel Mark V "clean-tech" engine.

The Cyclone Mark V is a Rankine Cycle heat-regenerative external-combustion engine that the company says can run on "virtually any fuel" including algae fuel and waste oil while emitting few pollutants.

The engine has a thermal efficiency of over 30 percent and produces fewer emissions than a modern gas or diesel internal-combustion engines, according to Cyclone. Mechanical energy is derived through the heating and cooling of water in a closed-loop, piston-based … Read more

Algae oil could dent U.S. oil imports, report says

The U.S. has enough land in the right climate to produce homegrown algae oil that would replace a significant amount of foreign oil imported for transportation use--without endangering its water supply.

The Gulf Coast region, the Southeastern seaboard, and the Great Lakes areas are ideally suited to grow algae in outdoor freshwater ponds with minimal water usage.

That's according to a study released today by the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in the journal Water Resources Research.

Biofuel made from refined algae oils, while showing promise, is still in the early stages of development. … Read more

Kior files to go public for advanced biofuels

The ethanol industry has not made progress as fast as expected on a more environmentally sound successor to corn ethanol. But so-called advanced biofuel companies are making progress scaling beyond the demonstration stage.

Pasadena, Texas-based Kior said yesterday it intends to raise as much as $100 million by going public on the stock market. The money will be used to fund construction of a commercial-scale biofuel facility in Mississippi, which is now under construction and is expected to be opened next year.

The company already has a demonstration facility making what it calls "gasoline and diesel blendstocks," or … Read more

'Solar fuel' research mimics photosynthesis

NEW HAVEN, Conn.--In an ambitious attempt to replicate nature, various researchers are seeking to create fuels from water and sunlight, much the way plants do.

California Institute of Technology professor Nate Lewis on Saturday gave a snapshot of the "swing for the fences" research his lab is pursuing to make fuels directly from water and sunlight. Caltech last year was picked as the lead for a newly created Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) to run the Department of Energy's Fuels from Sunlight Energy Innovation Hub.

The center is one of many so-called solar fuels efforts that seek to bypass the traditional biofuel method of growing plants and then convert biomass to a transportable, liquid fuel. Other researchers and companies are seeking to genetically engineer microbes that secrete fuels or develop cheaper methods for splitting water to make hydrogen fuel.

During a talk at the Yale Climate & Energy Institute's annual conference, Lewis described the concepts driving his research and what form a solar fuel generator could take.

The sun is the largest source of energy, but storing solar energy with conventional means, such as batteries, is very expensive, he said. The notion behind his research is to store solar energy in the chemical bonds of fuels. Light-duty transportation will move toward electric vehicles because they are more efficient than internal combustion engines, but there is still a need for liquid fuels in other forms of transportation or to generate power when there is no sun.

"It's inevitable that we will find a way to efficiently take the biggest energy source we have in the sun and store it in chemical fuels, thereby obviating the storage problem, thereby having a drop-in replacement fuel, and thereby solving the (fuel) infrastructure problem," he said. "We are going to do this. The question is how fast and how soon." … Read more

Study: 'Jet-fuel' crop success hinges on sites, seeds

Boeing's two-year study of jatropha-curcas agriculture in Brazil has found that location choice and strong seeds are the key to maximizing the crop's benefits, the company said today.

The jatropha-curcas plant has been under close scrutiny in recent years by scientists and companies because its olives yield an oil that can be made into an alternative jet fuel. The weedy plant can grow in adverse soil conditions. And in addition to yielding oil, it provides, like most plants, the secondary benefit of removing carbon from the atmosphere. Many have been trying to compare the carbon footprint of producing … Read more

In the lab, designing the ultimate biofuel bug

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--To reinvent the fuel business, engineers at biofuel start-up Joule Unlimited tinker with tiny life forms all day.

The four-year-old start-up is on the front lines of a branch of biotechnology that taps into the wealth of knowledge from genome sequencing and powerful computer tools to start from scratch and ask: if you wanted the ideal fuel, how would you make it?

The answer they've come up with is a diesel secreted by a genetically engineered microbe in flat plastic bioreactors. The only inputs for its "biofactory" organism are sunlight, pumped-in carbon dioxide, and some … Read more

Electromagnetism can deter algae pests, firm says

OriginOil has developed a new method for targeting invading microbes that can kill or damage algae ponds, the algae research company said today.

The method, which the Australia-based company plans to offer as a product called Algae Screen, uses low-power electromagnetic pulses to target rotifers, ciliates, and bacteria harmful to algae growth. And the pulses do not harm the algae themselves, according to OriginOil.

The electromagnetic pulses can be tailored to take into account issues such as the type of algae being grown, as well as the salinity and water hardness of an algae pond.

Algae Screen can be used … Read more